Latest addition to the barn-KOKO the horse!

Wow! First, last month in September we get the baby goats, Pumpkin and Iris, to add to our other goaties, and now we get a horse!

After my other horse, Bri died 4 years ago, I wasn’t sure I wanted another horse as the hole in my heart was as big as the horse and wasn’t sure I could go through that again so I had converted the corral into a giant pumpkin patch.

Fast forward to last month when a friend emailed me about Koko needing a home. Her owners who had lived in Nambe moved to town and Koko was being pastured at a neighbor’s place and they needed to find her a home before winter. So we went out and looked at her. She is a beautiful little 2-year-old black and white philly. She is considered a ‘pinto’ with her black and white coloring and is not registered. Pinto can refer to the coloring of a horse and not necessarily the bred and Koko is a mixed bred. I have always wanted a pinto horse, loving the colors and patterns they come in. In my mind’s eye I could see her in our corral even before I got her.

All week long I’ve been converting the giant pumpkin patch back into the corral and yesterday, our new friend, Nick, came over to help put the finishing touches on the corral before we all went to pick her up.

After finishing prepping the corral, Elodie, Chelsie, Nick and myself went out in their truck/horse trailer to pick up little Koko…

Nick tries loading Koko to no avail

It was challenging to say the least to load her in the horse trailer as she wasn’t use to getting in a horse trailer and was totally trailer shy. It took us over 3 hours to get her in it. I tried a few times-no luck. Nick tried the second time-no luck. Nick tried a few more times but still no luck. After that her owner, Steve tried multiple times-no way!

Chelsie finally got Koko into the trailer.

After many, many, many times of no go, it was Chelsie, our neighbor friend’s daughter who was finally able to coax her into it using Pat Parelli’s (a horse whisper) training techniques. We got her in the corral at home right as it was getting dark. She is very loving and sweet, only needs some training and attention. I can’t wait to start using Pat Parelli techniques that I’ve learned and had trained Bri with once I get my roundpen up again on Wednesday.

Koko in the morning in her new home happily eating her breakfast.

This morning she seemed very happy in her new digs. It feels good to have a full barn once again. Please welcome Koko!